Bangladesh's former government was behind systematic attacks and killings of protesters as it tried to hold onto power last year, the UN said Wednesday, warning the abuses could amount to "crimes against humanity".
Before prime minister Sheikh Hasina was toppled in a student-led revolution last August, her government cracked down on protesters and others, including "hundreds of extrajudicial killings", the United Nations said.
The UN rights office said it had "reasonable grounds to believe that the crimes against humanity of murder, torture, imprisonment and infliction of other inhumane acts have taken place."
These alleged crimes committed by the government, along with violent elements of her Awami League party and the Bangladeshi security and intelligence services, were part of "a widespread and systematic attack against protesters and other civilians," a UN report into the violence said.
Hasina, 77, who fled into exile in neighbouring India, has already defied an arrest warrant to face trial in Bangladesh for crimes against humanity.
- Up to 1,400 killed -
The rights office launched a fact-finding mission at the request of Bangladesh's interim leader Mohammed Yunus, sending a team including human rights investigators, a forensics physician and a weapons expert to the country.
Yunus welcomed the report, saying he wanted to transform "Bangladesh into a country in which all its people can live in security and dignity".
Wednesday's report is mainly based on more than 230 interviews with victims, witnesses, protest leaders, rights defenders and others, reviews of medical case files, and of photos, videos and other documents.
The team determined that security forces had supported Hasina's government throughout the unrest, which began as protests against civil service job quotas and then escalated into wider calls for her to stand down.
The rights office said the former government had tried to suppress the protests with increasingly violent means.
It estimated that "as many as 1,400 people may have been killed" over a 45-day time period, while thousands were injured.
The vast majority of those killed "were shot by Bangladesh's security forces", the rights office said, adding that children made up 12 to 13 percent of those killed.
The overall death toll given is far higher than the most recent estimate by Bangladesh's interim government of 834 people killed.
- 'Rampant state violence' -
"The brutal response was a calculated and well-coordinated strategy by the former government to hold onto power in the face of mass opposition," UN rights chief Volker Turk said.
"There are reasonable grounds to believe hundreds of extrajudicial killings, extensive arbitrary arrests and detentions, and torture, were carried out with the knowledge, coordination and direction of the political leadership and senior security officials as part of a strategy to suppress the protests."
Turk said the testimonies and evidence gathered by his office "paint a disturbing picture of rampant state violence and targeted killings".
The report also documented gender-based violence, including threats of rape aimed at deterring women from taking part in protests.
And the rights office said its team had determined that "police and other security forces killed and maimed children, and subjected them to arbitrary arrest, detention in inhumane conditions and torture."
The report also highlighted "lynchings and other serious retaliatory violence" against police and Awami league officials or supporters.
"Accountability and justice are essential for national healing and for the future of Bangladesh," Turk said.
He stressed that "the best way forward for Bangladesh is to face the horrific wrongs committed" during the period in question.
What was needed, he said, was "a comprehensive process of truth-telling, healing and accountability, and to redress the legacy of serious human rights violations and ensure they can never happen again."
Dozen died in detention after revolution
At least a dozen people died in detention in Bangladesh since last year's revolution, including by torture and gunshot wounds, a rights group said Wednesday.
Odhikar, one of the South Asian nation's largest human rights organisations, demanded justice from the interim government that took over after the student-led revolution that toppled former prime minister Sheikh Hasina.
"The interim government should not let these crimes go unpunished," Odhikar director ASM Nasiruddin Elan told AFP. "Those involved in extrajudicial killings must be brought to justice."
Odhikar detailed in a report how security forces during Hasina's 15-year-long autocratic rule engaged in widespread killings to bolster her power -- and accused the same agencies of continuing to commit human rights violations since she fled.
Hasina escaped into exile to neighbouring India on August 5, capping an uprising in which the United Nations says more than 1,400 people could have been killed, and has since defied an arrest warrant to face trial for crimes against humanity.
Since she left, Bangladeshi security forces have carried out sweeping arrests against supporters of Hasina's Awami League party and loyalists of what they dub her "fascist" ex-government.
Odhikar detailed 12 deaths that took place between August 9 and December 31, 2024.
Bangladesh's security forces are "investigating all the cases", Sami-Ud-Dowla Chowdhury, the armed forces' public relations director, told AFP.
- 'Right to justice' -
"Even the friends of the fascist regime have a right to justice," Elan said. "Extrajudicial killings must be prevented at any cost".
Three of them were in police custody, and the others were under the control of other security units, including the armed forces and much-feared paramilitary Rapid Action Battalion (RAB).
At least seven victims died after torture, and four had gunshot wounds, according to Odhikar.
Another person was beaten and later pushed off a bridge by the police, it added.
Among the cases was the death of 18-year-old Elahi Sikdar from the city of Gopalganj, who was arrested for allegedly attacking soldiers. His injured corpse was later recovered from a hospital.
His brother Kudrat Sikdar said that, like many families of the dead, they would not be filing a case.
"We have accepted his death as destiny," Kudrat Sikdar said.
In response to the report, Bangladesh police spokesperson Inamul Haque Sagar told AFP that officers had been ordered to "refrain from activities beyond their jurisdiction".
The armed forces were granted judicial powers enforcement activities like the police -- including making arrests -- after the revolution.
Army chief Waker-Uz-Zaman said he worried about that role being extended.
"The more our people stay in the field, the more there is the fear that they will face unlawful activities," he told the Prothom Alo newspaper.